Risks and insurance are closely linked
Risks and insurance are closely linked. First, because we cannot conceive of insurance without the notions of risk and loss. Then, the risks very early on were understood in the form of insurance. Despite this close connection, these two concepts were supported by separate scientific communities, which developed their own literature and concepts. On the one hand, actuarial science which focuses on the economic and financial dimensions of risk. On the other hand, what could be called “the science of risks” if it existed, that is to say the environmental sciences, engineering and social sciences which are interested in primarily environmental dimensions, technical and societal risk. Faced with the new forms that risks are currently taking, particularly those related to biotechnology, the action regimes to which these two concepts belong are changing. This article attempts to sketch the outlines of this change and point out the obstacles to be overcome.
1 This article is based on research carried out for several years on the one hand by Andràs November (...)
2We will unfold our discussion in five steps1. After having noted the most characteristic dimensions of the notion of risk and of the usual risk-insurance relationship, we will dive into the preparation of the pre-modern insurance system to arrive at the mechanisms currently used. The use of the precautionary principle will then be presented as an illustration of a possible new articulation of the risk-insurance relationship.
1. Insurance: a translation of risk
2 Insurance is “the operation by which the insurer undertakes to provide a service to (...)
3 Ulrich Beck, The Risk Society. On the way to another modernity, Paris, Aubier, 2001 (first (...)
4 François Ewald, History of the Welfare State, Paris, Grasset, 1996. Other works link (...)
3The risk - inseparable from human decisions and activities - constitutes the basis of insurance, the purpose of which is first of all to cover any damage that may result therefrom (damage insurance) and then to compensate, if necessary, for damage caused to others following a fault attributable to their insured (civil liability insurance - RC) 2. In other words, the “risk society”, to use Ulrich Beck's now famous qualifier3, is at the same time an “insurance company”, terminology used by François Ewald to characterize the proliferation of insurance4.
5 Godard et al., Op. cit., p. 377.
4It is in this sense that a close relationship is established between risks and insurance. The link is formed around the worry about risks and the desire for security that insurance brings. It appears that one of the foundations of recourse to insurance is the fear of the occurrence of a certain hazard against which one wants to be protected. […] The more an economic agent is afraid of an event, the more his willingness to pay in the insurance contract is high ”5. Responding to a visceral requirement to reinforce security in society, insurance generates the antidote to risk: in techno-industrial society, risk aversion goes hand in hand with the growing propensity to strengthen the cover provided by insurance. assurance. However, it would be unfair to mention only the aversion of the “economic agent” or his desire for comfort. A large number of legal constraints in fact oblige each citizen to insure himself against a series of risks whether he likes it or not, thereby considerably increasing dependence on insurance. This is the case for fire risk, building insurance, civil liability and many others. In a way, the current insurance system (whether subscription is compulsory or not) can be seen as the expression in compensatory terms of manifestations of risk (whatever they may be). It is therefore possible to consider that insurance is a form of risk translation.
5This relationship, which seems obvious at first glance, does not however exclude the fact that the risk / insurance couple is crossed by many tensions and oppositions. We detail five particular elements of this relationship below.
A probabilistic relationship: in general, to deal with risks that are potential or random, insurers seek to objectify them, to make them probabilistic and to codify them (from a legal point of view) by resorting to various statistical techniques and calculations actuarial. The application of these tools makes it possible to establish a better anticipation of the insured risks. Insurance is based for this on probabilistic laws and statistical series and can be considered as "a machine for counting risks".
6 To clarify the terminology used here, let us note that the danger is a “threat which can compromise (...)
An economic relationship: we talk about risks when there are uncertainties about the damage that could occur. It is the harbinger of an unfavorable event, often serious, of which we do not know the time of occurrence or the extent. Insurance, for its part, seeks to establish causalities which are the sources of claims, and to assess beforehand the amount of possible damages. In other words, insurance represents the economic dimension of risk, since it focuses above all on the resulting damage6. As insurance always includes a monetary consideration (insurance premium), it often, but not always, resembles an economic for-profit transaction.
An evolving relationship: risks are evolving, they change according to technological development and the increasing complexity of the organization of society, while insurance companies only follow this evolution. In techno-industrial civilization, risk is not only omnipresent, but also proportional to the power of technologies. It constantly requires the development of new scientific and technical knowledge. New technologies - such as biotechnologies - carry new risks that the insurance system strives to understand and take charge of, always inventing new innovative forms of insurance.
7 Cf. Pierre Lascoumes (1996, p. 363) who distinguishes the reported risks (“those for which the state (...)
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